Emaline loves to bounce...

"...and bounce and bounce and bounce. Sometimes she eats, sometimes she sleeps, but mostly, she bounces."


That's from her new favorite book, Emily Loves to Bounce. Because really, it's about her. One of her first words was "chockabba," meaning both kangaroo or jump. Sadly, she no longer says
"chockabba," it's "kay-woo," but whenever she's jumping around she yells "I jumping like a kay-woo!"









So we were thrilled when a friend invited us to one of those giant bounce house places. Mabes was in heaven. Being the concerned parent, I was a little worried that it would be overrun by tons of big kids and injuries just waiting to happen. But since it was a Wednesday morning, it was pretty much just the under 3 crowd, and not much of a crowd at that. There were times we were the only ones in whatever inflatable structure we were playing on at the time.










Mabes ran from one structure to another, each time yelling, "Mommy! I jumping! Look at me, mommy!" So she got some great exercise, and is getting really good at climbing ladders (and whatever you'd call this), and loved all the slides and weird squishy things to jump on. It was so much fun. I kept thinking of my brother and how he'd be in heaven here. He keeps saying he and his wife will visit, so if/when they do, we know where we're taking Uncle Jeff and Aunt Kirsten! It was so funny to see all these parents jumping along with their toddlers, and I had a blast on the slides. I think I was probably more scared than Mabes. She has no fear!









Two hours later, we came home, ate lunch, and put her down for a nap she was so ready for. It was good exercise for both of us, she got to play with her friends, and we just had a fun morning.

Mabes and a Duck

We had playgroup at the park yesterday. Mabes loves this park because it's right next to a lake with ducks and seagulls and will periodically run over to the lake and plop down on the grass and just watch the ducks. During snacktime yesterday, she was holding a pretzel and a cracker and this one duck was circling the table of kids just waiting to pounce on something. All the other kids were closely guarding their snacks, but Mabes was far more interested in the duck.

She was saying, "Hello, duck! How are you?" and waving the hand with the cracker in it. Seeing an opportunity, the duck pounced and grabbed the cracker out of her hand. Mabes jumped back, shocked, but pretty pleased with herself. She tried to get the duck to take the pretzel, but he wasn't interested. It was then that I realized that all the other kids were pretty freaked out by this, and the moms were upset--"Oh, no, the duck could have bitten her!" I'll admit, I'm overprotective about a lot of things, to the point of being just a step or two away from crazy. But really? Ducks? I mean, I thought the ducks in Fremont were bad (back in the day you were actually allowed to feed them), but then we went to Oregon, and the ducks there were just flat-out vicious. They'll take your food whether or not you had intended to feed them. They're so used to people feeding them, they have no fear. Compared to those ducks, this one practically asked for her cracker politely before gently taking it.

So maybe I was a horrible mom for letting her, but she kept running around with this duck. She'd hold out the pretzel, and say, "Here duck! Chase me!" then shake her booty at him and run/skip away. The duck wasn't as interested, so she just kept repeating this little dance around him. Finally, he waddled over to the lake and jumped in. Mabes followed to the edge of the rocks, and shouted, "Bye bye, duck! See you later! I take a picture of you! Cheese!" Apparently, the pretzel was her camera, which was why she refused to eat it.

As a sidenote, I am so excited, it's ridiculous. Why? Because I finally found Little Einstein's underwear today. I realize this speaks volumes about the level of excitement in my life, but screw that, I don't care. I've spent way too much time on google searches, ebay searches, at various Targets and the Disney Store looking for them, but I finally found them today at a Target I don't usually go to. And on clearance--it doesn't get much better than that. I think I've convinced myself that these panties will potty train Mabes on their own. They also had boy underwear, so after calling Sarah, I picked up a set for Dono. I just keep giggling.

....And I just returned from a short break. Mabes appeared to be concentrating a little to deeply on her kitchen counter, and I asked her if she needed to poop. This question is usually met with a loud "No!" and she runs to her room and then poops. This time, she glanced at the June panties (proudly on display, I had told her she couldn't wear them until she pooped on the potty) and said, "I go to potty." And she did it! Ahhhh, bribery....

What's going on in that head of hers?

First of all, her vocabulary is crazy. Forget picking up new words, she's pulling things out from who-knows-where. Like yesterday, she grabbed a sash (from her pirate costume) and said it was her jump rope and kept attempting to jump over it. I have no clue where she learned about jump ropes. Nursery?

She talks non-stop. Not only does she wake up happy, all her toys do, too. Or so she says. "Mommy, wheh ah you! Mommy, I wape [wake up] happy!" Then when Dave or I go get her, she repeats that she's happy, then tells us that Ricecake (also called Lammy now, since that's what Dono calls his stuffed lamb) woke up happy, along with Winston, the giant stuffed dog my mom bought her last year. Her Little People house woke up happy, her airplane woke up happy, her cars woke up happy, her dolls woke up happy...you get the idea. Oh, and those toys also stay dry and poop in the potty, not their panties--her words, not mine. Fabulous, Mabes, but since your toy vacuum is so good at pooping in the potty, maybe you could just try?

In the last few days, she'd decided she's ready for another airplane trip. Specifically, a trip to see Ainsleigh and Dono. She'll randomly say, "Shoot, mommy, I need suitcase!" Why? "So we go on airplane, fly up up in sky, and see Ainsleigh and Dono!" She gets really upset when I tell her we can't go on the airplane because we don't have tickets. "But I want to fly airplane, see pilot, see Ainsleigh Dono!" She was dragging around a belt today and mumbling something about suitcases, then I realized she thought it was her suitcase and she was packed and ready to go. She also thinks she needs to drag her backpack around, undeterred when I point out its obvious lack of wheels.

And perhaps the newest addition to her vocabulary is the word "curly." We use it a lot to describe her hair, Dave always tells her how much he loves her curly hair. But we think she thinks curly means cute. She always talks about mommy's curly hair (?) and then tonight told Dave he was so curly, and then she dropped to the floor and wiggled around saying, "I curly, too! Look at me! I so curly!"

More Christmas...and Happy New Year!

So Christmas was great. We got to see both of our families, and Mabes was thrilled to be reunited with her cousins and Louie. That first day was madness and mayhem, the way it should be at my parents' house. But it was fun. Emaline got a big fluffy skirt from her cousins and loves it--here's Becca twirling her:

I thought I would highlight all the fun activities, but really, it was just a lot of hanging out, playing games, laughing, and eating. It doesn't sound exciting, but had some really good food, and that's always exciting to us. Mabes did well with the time and schedule changes, and was great for the long flight back. We had so much fun with everyone. Here's Mabes and Uncle Jeff playing Rock Band. I guess Ainsleigh and Dono are the groupies?


But after our plane landed and we had finally found our luggage, Mabes and I were waiting outside in the 22 degree weather for the long-term parking shuttle. We were waiting for the purple lot bus, but instead only saw the orange lot bus, the buses for Hertz, Dollar, and thrifty, some hotel shuttles, and then the Wiener Mobile. Seriously. Just zooming through the shuttle section of the airport. Had it stopped, I totally would have gotten on, because the purple lot bus clearly wasn't going to come take me to my car and perhaps the Wiener Mobile would take me to hot dogs. But sadly, it just sailed by.

How to kill 3 hours at an airport

Christmas vacation, part 1:

We felt kind of guilty that we were making Mabes spend half of Christmas Day traveling, until we realized this only added to her Christmas experience. She loved it. For a girl that loves all kinds of transportation, this was heaven. We got to ride a shuttle bus from long term parking to the airport, then got on a plane, got off at IAH where we then rode a train to another terminal, rode on the moving sidewalk, then got on another plane to California. Mabes thought this was great. And remember fruitcake friend? No, we didn't take it along. But as soon as our first plane took off and they started handing out snacks, Mabes grabbed my bag of peanuts and hung on to it. All day. She even napped holding it. She never tried to open it, she just always had to have it with her.

So she loved the moving sidewalk/people mover/whatever-it's-called--note the bag of peanuts in her left hand. We finally found some food and decided to eat. Mabes and I both ordered a kid's meal which was ridiculously huge. "Three chicken strips and fries" was more like three fried chicken breasts and a giant order of fries. It was good, though!







After dinner, Dave took Mabes back to the train between terminals and just rode them back and forth. Kind of a sad way to spend Christmas, but Mabes was giddy and loved every minute of it. She got to ride the sidewalk just a few more times before boarding the second plane, and by then was completely wired.





Our plane didn't leave Houston 9:30 pm our time, an hour past Mabes' bedtime. So I foolishly hoped that she'd sleep the whole flight, silly Allison. She didn't sleep at all (and only slept an hour on the earlier flight) and was just lovely by the time we landed at 11 something--after 2 am our time. Tired and ready to crash, we got to Hertz, where Dave successfully dodged the PT Cruiser bullet--disaster averted. (PT Cruisers make me mad. I can't explain it.) The last few hours of the day were rough, but all things considered, the day went well, and we actually had a lot of fun. I'll post more about our actual Christmas later, but I just wanted to get something on here for now.